Boards

What the fuck were they doing in the 90's when they transfered classic albums onto cd? I'm just listening to 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', the last track i forgot how bad the sound is in places. What the hell were they doing in the 90's when they were transfering the tapes? It's the same with Thin Lizzy.
The sound just drops out. Like when your walkman chewsed your favourite tape.

some of my favourite sounding CDs are 90s masters of earlier stuff. In general terms, 00s remasters are far more guilty of poor sound than ones from the 90s - back then the novelty of CDs was still in the audio quality, so engineers tried to get across things like dynamic range and fidelity. Some of them end up sounding quiet, some of them are little more than straight vinyl rips, but they're usually of a superior quality. Modern engineers seem to equate remastering with "louder and crisper", so you often get compressed, flat, metallic, dynamically sodden bits of garbage. Just like modern records, innit.

I'd always take a second hand 90s transfer over a recent remaster, you're far less likely to get motherfucked

i fully respect your opinion and appreciate that mine isn't as well thought out, but the way i've always seen it is that back then the novelty of cds was in their portability, lifespan and convenience, and thus the majors just as cheaply as possible shoved all their back cat onto cd to resell as profitably as possible. whatever your take on the loudness war, there are shitloads of terrible, watery, cold sounding 90s cds that dont sound anything like the vinyl.